List of spacecraft in the Culture series
This is a list of spacecraft found in the Culture novels and short stories by Iain M. Banks. Most ships in this list are members of The Culture, the hybrid society featured in many of these novels. In this setting, each Culture ship, and some others, is also an artificial intelligence with a distinctive personality. Many of these ships are significant characters in the novels.Excession review (from a bookseller reviews page of the Waterstone's bookstore chain, Orpington store. Accessed 2008-03-29.)"Iain Banks writes books about sex and drugs. Iain M Banks is a sci-fi nerd. Are they by any chance related?" - The Guardian, Tuesday 20 May 1997 Naming The machine intelligences called Minds (and, as a consequence, the Culture starships that they inhabit) usually bear names that do a little more than just identify them. The Minds choose their own names, and thus they usually express something about a particular Mind's attitude, character or aims in their personal life. Warship names are similar in retaining the whimsical nature, though the humour tends to be more cynical and threatening. The classification of the ship types sometimes implies a degree of cultural embarrassment of the power they can potentially wield, for example their renaming of Demilitarised Rapid Offensive Units ((D)ROUs) as "Very Fast Pickets", whether or not they are actually "Demilitarised", while later the term "picket ship" is used to describe an Abominator-class General Offensive Unit, one of the most powerful front-line warship classes ever built by the Culture. "General Systems Vehicles" as a designation does not highlight the true potency of these craft, which could be hundreds of kilometres long. Banks composed many of the Culture ships' names very carefully to express the attitude of the ship's Mind, and a few names contain puns where both meanings are appropriate to the ship's attitude. A few of the ship names, like variations on "gravitas", are also installments in running gags. Some ships' names hint at their purpose, but in a way that is not clear until near the end of the book. For example, the Sleeper Service is a sleeper agent whose cover is storing people in suspended animation "sleeper service", and the Grey Area indulges in the (from the Culture's perspective) moral grey-area of reading the brains ("grey matter") of organic entities to root out historical genocidal acts. Common ship types Common ship types in the Culture series include: Novels Consider Phlebas Ships mentioned in Consider Phlebas include: The Player of Games Ships mentioned in The Player of Games include: The State of the Art Most of the Culture ship names in this collection come from the titles of the chapters in the titular novella. The narrator explains that it has used the names of ships produced by a manufactory of the Yinang Orbitals of the Dahass-Khree, birthplace of the Arbitrary and known for ships that are "a bit crazy."The State of the Art - Banks, Iain M., 1991 Ships mentioned in The State of the Art include: *Names mentioned in the chapter names of the title novella only. All of them belong to ships produced by the Infracaninophile manufactury in Yinang Orbital. Use of Weapons Ships mentioned in Use of Weapons include: Excession Ships mentioned in Excession include: Look to Windward Most of the Culture ship names in Look to Windward are only mentioned in a humorous conversation about ship names in Chapter 11, Absence of Gravitas, and do not represent characters in the novel. Ships mentioned in Look to Windward include: †Names mentioned in a humorous conversation about various Culture ships in Chapter 11 of the novel. Matter Ships mentioned in Matter include: Surface Detail Ships mentioned in Surface Detail include: The Hydrogen Sonata Ships mentioned in The Hydrogen Sonata include: Further ships The following ships have not appeared in any books, however they were named by Iain M Banks in an interview with The Guardian. These ships obtained their names as a result of another (unnamed) Involved civilisation criticizing Culture ship naming policy, claiming that such powerful ships ought to have names with a little more gravitas. *''Stood Far Back When The Gravitas Was Handed Out'' *''Gravitas, What Gravitas?'' *''Gravitas... Gravitas... No, Don't Help Me, I'll Get It In A Moment...'' *''Gravitas Free Zone'' *''Low Gravitas Warning Signal'' *''Absolutely No You-Know-What'' Legacy The autonomous spaceport drone ships Of Course I Still Love You, Just Read the Instructions 1 & 2, operated by SpaceX, were named after General Contact Units mentioned in The Player of Games, as a posthumous homage to Banks by Elon Musk. The construction of a fourth drone ship, named A Shortfall of Gravitas, was announced by Elon Musk via Twitter on February 12, 2018. It is named after the Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall, a ship mentioned in Look to Windward and Matter as a GSV and GCU respectively. References